In 2012, as a bright-eyed and adventure-seeking undergrad, I spent a semester studying community development in Kenya. This experience played a large role in launching me into my current career of international education. I returned from Kenya thinking “everyone needs to experience this” and made it my personal and professional mission to connect young people with these global opportunities.

Then and now: Me as a student with my host mom, Sheila, and host sister, Ashley.

Our reunion 13 years later!

Nearly 13 years later, I returned to East Africa for the first time to meet with my students who are interning with local non-profit organizations through the Loewenstern Fellowship. As with most post-travel reflections, words fail me and I find it challenging to sum up everything I experienced, even in just one day of my site visit. This is my humble attempt to tug at some strings that are still dangling in my brain:
Compassion in the face of injustice. I met with four different non-profit organizations in East Africa – three current community partners who are hosting interns, and one potential new partner. Each is working across different social issues – female empowerment, public health, anti-human trafficking, and refugee resettlement. Their teams are different sizes, their funding sources vary, they have different projects in the works and face different challenges. But they all share the same eager and steadfast belief that we can and should help the most vulnerable among us, and that process is always better when it’s collaborative. Every community partner emphasized the guiding principles we talk about every day at the Center for Civic Leadership: Do with, not for. The communities know what they need best – listen to them. Treat each person with dignity. Mobilize. Start with strengths. Think of creative and innovative solutions as opportunities, not fixes.

The Azadi team in Nairobi, Kenya.

The KIFAD team in Wakiso, Uganda.

The Pangea Network team in Nairobi, Kenya.
One moment in particular really drove this home for me: On the day I visited Azadi, a non-profit committed to supporting survivors of human-trafficking, I sat in on their monthly “learning hour,” where each member of the team (including the kitchen and cleaning staff) engages with an article, video, or podcast about a chosen topic and discusses together. The learning topic this month was compassion, and revisioning compassion as a tool for change.

Hanging out at the Azadi office.
This topic was salient in light of the protests that happened in Nairobi just two days before. Kenya’s Gen Z is leading the charge in demanding more transparency from President Ruto and commemorating the 22 protestors who died in violent clashes with the police at a similar protest last year. This year, 10 people were known to be killed by the police on the day of the protest, but more bodies were found in the coming days. It was brutal and scary and everyone was talking about it.
So here we were, two days after this horrific event that rocked the country, cozying up on the sofas in the Azadi office, talking about compassion.
People were disheartened. They were mourning. They were angry. How on earth could they be compassionate when they saw so little compassion from their leaders? The conversation took many interesting turns. How to approach with curiosity the humans with whom we feel most at odds. How to understand a problem from a different perspective. How to employ self-compassion. How to use anger as a tool for motivation towards compassionate action. How to balance compassion with accountability. Can accountability itself be compassionate?
It was fascinating to engage in this discussion and share insights from the US. The protests in LA a few weeks prior showed many parallels. We closed the conversation not with any clear answers, but with an overwhelming sense of solidarity, community, and hope as the Azadi team then transitioned back to their work. And this was just one hour at the Azadi office.
Growth is gradual. At the risk of sounding patronizing, I really want to take a moment to emphasize just how much the students are growing through this experience. I don’t think they always realize it. It’s difficult to spot growth when it is happening to you, but the best part of my job is that I get to witness the students’ growth over time – from when they first learn about the opportunity to go abroad, then submit an application, get the pre-travel jitters as they prepare for their summer internship, and go on to do amazing things in the years after their abroad experience.

I got to pop in to witness what a typical day is like for these interns. I saw them haggle with taxi drivers and order meals in Swahili. I met the local friends they’ve made and went to their favorite city park. I even joined them for a morning jog with a local running club before they started the work week. I saw their office space, their apartment, their corner grocery store. But most of all, I saw their astonishing growth. I saw confidence that they wouldn’t have recognized in themselves just a few months prior. I saw intuition as they navigated complicated group dynamics and working relationships. I saw humility as they laughed at themselves when they still messed up the word for “water” even after weeks of practicing the language. I saw more openness to nuance and less tendency to jump to a clear yes or no answer. I saw them ask their supervisors thoughtful questions and saw their supervisors beam proudly when the students took the lead on something they had trained them how to do just a few short weeks ago. I tried as often as I could to point out these things I was noticing to the students, to show them that these daily habits they have grown accustomed to are new skills they may not realize they have in their toolbox now.

Difference is precious. When I met with the US Embassy in Nairobi, I learned the term “silicon savannah” as a descriptor of the vibrant industries and entrepreneurial spirit that is booming in Kenya. It was so refreshing to not see a single Amazon delivery truck on the roads. Instead, Kenyan-born businesses reigned, like M-Pesa, a mobile money tool that was co-created in Kenya years before we were using Venmo in the states.
I marveled at so many things that were being done differently in the places I visited and thought to myself, “why aren’t we doing this in the US?”
Every country should ban plastic water bottles in public parks like Kenya.
Every country should be as welcoming to refugees as Uganda.
Every airport should have community quiet rooms like Qatar.
But not everyone does, and that’s kind of beautiful too. We are not a homogenous world, and that’s the best part.
When I returned to the US, my brother asked me if I was happy to be back. Of course I am. I am happy to be closer to my friends, have my creature comforts like oat milk again, and not have to calculate the 10+ hour time difference in my head. But I am also going to miss my new friends that I didn’t get enough time with. I’m going to miss the incredible biodiversity of the Sub-Saharan and the noisy matatus and boda bodas that fill the streets during rush hour.
Our Western form of citizenship makes us believe we belong to only one place, as it’s defined by national borders. It’s not lost on me how lucky I am to have a passport that allows me to blur that sense of belonging by traveling to far away places. It’s a privilege to have my network and international community and it takes a lot of money and time to build it. With that privilege, I want to work against the confines of categorization and hold multiple perspectives simultaneously, in my role at the CCL and in life. I can choose to hold on to bits from each of these experiences and forge a path that reflects all the light I’ve witnessed in these places and people.
I know the partners who host Rice students also choose to do the same thing. They choose to hear new ideas at their staff meetings, take a chance on hosting a stranger in their home, and hold open arms to students from far away when the news headlines give them every reason to be cautious.
This is what I strive to create through our programs at the CCL – a sense of connection. Multiplicity. A holistic view instead of either/or and us/them. We need to reach across arbitrary borders to feel joy and pain with our fellow earth-dwellers. We need to hold our differences preciously, and in doing so, find our fundamental similarities.

CCL, Rice360, iSeed, and alumni sharing a meal in Nairobi!